attackfish

Writing my current chapterfic, Children of Mars, is becoming a didactic exercise. The writing itself is as much a pleasure as ever, and has even gained a sense of catharsis, but when it comes time to post, I want to just save it to my computer and never let one more idiot reader anywhere near it. Now I know not all of you dear readers are idiots, and one of the things I like best about writing fanfiction is the social framework and critique of fandom (yeah, I write for the comments, such a bad girl) and I have never felt this way about posting a fic before. Before I have always written about able-bodied characters.

My writing Snape with a disability along with werewolfism is part protest at the way characters with disabilities were portrayed in the books I read as a child and part personal expression of myself as a writer with disabilities. We don’t have the same disability, in the story Snape uses crutches, whereas I’m oxygen dependent and have an immune disease, but we share a certain status as people with disabilities, or (good God) disabled people. It’s wonderful, and freeing, and it makes me feel so much better after bad days.

But once I post, it seems like so many of the reviews I receive are “teachable moments” and that’s not so wonderful.

Some of you have been saying you can’t wrap your heads around Snape as disabled. That isn’t because of anything inherent in either Snape as a character or disability, but in cultural narratives that paint people with disabilities as either weak, or more insidiously as plucky, happy symbols of Good, like the damsel in distress in action movies, not a character so much as an object. Snape will never be a tragic, passive, stoic cripple (a word that I see a lot in reviews and makes me throw up a little in my mouth each time). He will never be helpless. He is and always will be a snarky git. So many of the reviews talk about how horrible all of the other characters are to him. Well, he’s horrible to them. Besides which if anyone, even Lily, especially Lily, were suddenly to treat him like a helpless incompetent child who can’t protect himself or do a thing on his own, he would hex them all into oblivion. When people do that to me, I wish I could.

When I was a kid, books about people with disabilities seemed to end one of two ways. Either the pure, good, tragic cripple died, or the pure, good, tragic cripple was cured. Okay, there were also villains whose disabilities were a symbolic sign of their inner corruption, but I’m not even going to touch that one. Such endings are incredibly disheartening for me, growing up, because I didn’t want to die, and I was never going to be miraculously cured. I had to carve out a happy ending of my own that included my disability. For those of you who keep saying you want Snape’s leg repaired at the end, you are tapping into that same disenfranchising cultural narrative. Stop it. Stop it now. Don’t make me get out my squirt bottle of wrathful smiting. Whatever ending I write (and I will spoil this, if nothing else) Snape and his disability will be around at the end, along with their happy ending.

One thing I didn’t mention about the perfect tragic cripple trope is that they are always portrayed as lacking any sort of sexuality at all. They neither have sexual feelings or are appropriate objects of desire for other characters. What. The. Hell. Okay, okay, there is one type of character with disabilities allowed to lust, the disabled villain. Of course their sexuality is always portrayed as deviant, and threatening, and further sign of their evil. Now, no one has sent me a comment with this bit of fail in it, as Snape hasn’t done any more than engage in some canon unrequited Lily love, but I’m waiting, When the situation calls for them, I’ll get these too. I have no doubt.

All of this makes me feel even more queasy as I write this, and I get no catharsis or enjoyment from it. It shouldn’t be my job, but because I will continue writing characters with disabilities, not just in fic but in original works as well, I have put myself in the position of teaching by example, so for my own peace of mind, I must also teach directly. I’m sure those characters will get similar sorts of reviews, sometimes, if I’m lucky, from reviewers and writers I respect. When I send my stories out into the world, the knowledge that people will read my characters differently because of their disabilities will always be there.

Snape is not tragic. He is not a poor crippled boy to be protected and treated nicely by the noble heroes. He is the hero. He will fight against and work with his disability, but ultimately, he will do it on his own, like all of us must do at the end of the day.

I’m sure I didn’t cover everything in this post, and a lot of you will be rolling your eyes going “yes, we know all this” and this is really basic realize people with disabilities are people stuff, but I keep getting comments where I have to reiterate this. All of you dear readers who do know all this, thank you, and no fear all, I’m still writing Children of Mars and other fanfics.